STEVE ISRAEL: Stones in my wall a connection to the land that I call home

Friday

Apr 26, 2013 at 2:00 AM

Why on earth would I build a stone wall — again?

Steve Israel

Why on earth would I build a stone wall — again?

I don't need a new stone wall. I don't have property lines that need marking. And I sure don't have anyone — or anything — to keep away from our home, I hope.

Yet there I was last weekend, lifting dozens and dozens of stones — take-a-deep-breath-and-bend-at-the-knees-heavy stones — one by one, from a pile on our lawn.

Amazingly, these stones were from another stone wall that I had foolishly — and against the advice of my wife and neighbor — built a few feet from the road at the beginning of our driveway. As they had predicted, the snow piled up and toppled the wall that took weeks to build.

So when I decided that the sad-looking wall — really a pile of stones and rubble — had to go, my neighbor suggested a great spot for a new one would be on the lawn in front of our house. Like the stone-cold fool I am, I said, Why not?

The next thing I know, he's borrowed another neighbor's backhoe and placed the stones right where the wall should go, in front of my house.

Now I had to turn that pile of rocks into a wall.

As you might have guessed, I'm not exactly a stone-wall type of guy like my neighbor. He grew up here in Sullivan County's stone-wall country, and can build and fix anything.

I'm from Bayonne, N.J. The only stones I knew of were the Rolling kind, named Mick and Keith. The only wall I ever thought of was the one Pink Floyd sang about. Plus, I grew up in an apartment on Avenue C, where if a faucet leaked, we called Mr. O'Toole, the superintendent.

But there I was, choosing the biggest, flattest stones for the bottom of the wall, and layering the small ones on top. And it got harder as I went along, since I first used up all the good, big stones and then had to figure out how to fit the small ones together.

But as the 20-foot-long, 1½-foot-high shape began to look like, well, a wall — and I fit the last stones together, saving some long, flat ones for the top — I stood back and thought of the pile of rocks that was now something solid. I wasn't just building a stone wall, I thought. I was building something bigger than myself.

The stones I had chosen were from the land where I live, and love, and call home. In these disposable days, when something breaks and we just throw it away, this rebuilt wall is meant to last. When we often feel so disconnected to the people and places around us, I was connected. With my own hands, I had built a stone wall.